Tony Henry told agents during January window they don't want African players Director Tony Henry said the policy is because African players 'cause mayhem' West Ham currently have seven players of African descent in their first team Henry said: 'It's nothing racist at all... sometimes they can have a bad attitude'

By Matt Lawton

West Ham United have left themselves open to accusations of racism and potentially unlawful discrimination after telling agents in the transfer window that they don’t want to sign any more African players.

After being confronted by Sportsmail, the club’s director of player recruitment, Tony Henry, made the shocking admission that West Ham do indeed want to limit the number of African players because ‘they have a bad attitude’ and ‘cause mayhem’ when they are not in the team.

West Ham's director of transfers Tony Henry has confirmed the club's current transfer stance

Lord Ouseley, chairperson of Kick It Out, described an email sent by Henry — and leaked to this newspaper — as potentially unlawful.

Henry sent an email on January 27 — in response to an inquiry about a footballer of Cameroonian descent — to another senior West Ham official and an agent.

In the email, Henry wrote: ‘We don’t want any more Africans and he’s not good enough. I sent Thomas to watch him and the other lad last week and he said no. If Palace take them good luck.’ Sportsmail knows the identity of both recipients but a stipulation before being sent the email was that they should remain anonymous.

Henry was asked if there is a club policy regarding African players. Initially he replied ‘no’, only to be informed that we understand he has told more than one agent in the last month that the club does not want any more African players.

Henry then confirmed it was true and suggested it was a policy supported by club management. ‘Yeah,’ Henry replied. ‘Because we had three and we felt we didn’t particularly want any more African players.’

Asked why, Henry replied: ‘Erm, no reason. It’s nothing racist at all. It’s just sometimes they can have a bad attitude.

‘We had problems with Sakho, with Diafra Sakho. We find that when they are not in the team they cause mayhem. It’s nothing against the African race at all.

‘I mean, look, there are top African players. There’s not a problem with them. It’s just sometimes they cause a lot of problems when they are not playing, as we had with Diafra. He’s left, so great. It’s nothing personal at all.’

Asked if he thought his view was discriminatory towards African players, Henry asked: ‘In what way?’

Asked then if he thought his comments amounted to a slight on African players, he replied: ‘No. I don’t know what you are trying to get at here. All I said was, look, we have a great lad in (Cheikhou) Kouyate, he’s brilliant, a great player for us, he’s a good lad.

‘But the likes of Sakho have caused mayhem. When he’s not playing … he always wants a new deal. That’s all it was. It was nothing discriminatory at all.

‘I could say we get offered Russian players. I just find with Russian players that they don’t settle in England.

‘It’s like Italians. How many Italians come and settle in England? As a club we are not discriminatory at all.

‘If you’ve got too many, they all sit together and it becomes a situation where you can have problems. But then you can have problems with English players. I don’t know what you are driving at.’

Lord Ouseley was contacted before the conversation with Henry but in response to the 60-year-old former Manchester City player’s email, he said: ‘From my point of view, firstly, that is clearly unacceptable now in football. But secondly it’s unlawful to make a statement like that.

‘It’s clearly discriminatory but giving instruction to someone to discriminate against a person is unlawful.

‘Kick It Out would not expect this from any football club official and I would expect that club to take the necessary action.’

Sportsmail contacted West Ham on Wednesday and this was their statement: ‘West Ham United is an inclusive, respectful and diverse football club. Equality is at the heart of our ethos and values.

‘We were recently given the opportunity to demonstrate the extent of our firm commitment to these values, which are embedded throughout the Club, with a view to achieving the intermediate level of the Premier League’s equality mark, recognised and supported by Kick it Out.

‘We have worked extremely hard over the last 18 months across all areas of the Club and we are confident in our achievements. All West Ham United employees are required to go on equality, diversity and unconscious-bias training as part of our new mandatory training and workforce plan.

‘We take any allegations of discrimination extremely seriously and are now in the process of ascertaining the full facts behind this accusation.’----------------------------------------------------------

My take is that most chief scouts would see their job as finding ‘good players’ to a brief and handing over the signing of them to the person who negotiates that.Dealing with that player is then up to the manager and the chief scout would almost feel that is not his business.

The only reason he would be saying these sort of things to agents would be if he has had feedback from higher up to tweak the brief he is giving out.Why would he otherwise make his own job more difficult by restricting the players he considers?

Can you think of anyone higher up who would stick his oar in and give the Chief Scout these instructions?Clue : It’s not the manager on a six month contract

If I want to bring somebody on board my team and I have a customer-driven (that is, I have NO SAY in the date), do I look for that person in a group where there is a 10% chance of finding them in time to meet that deadline, or a group where the chance is 90%? (Or, do I lump them all together with a 50% chance (of MISSING that deadline and the potential of future work)?

If you work for the government/large multi-national organisation, you won't truly understand the concept of a deadline, even though you've looked it up in a dictionary, so probably best you avoid putting yourself in a position where you have to make such choices.

Henry didn’t speak well, under pressure from the journalist and so dug a nice big hole for himself. Probably not media savvy rather than not too bright.I think the idea of “Africans” and “mayhem” seems likely to have come from the top.Conclusion - thrown under the bus, hung out to dry,etc by the owners .

What probably did for him was trying to deny it was racist when confronted by the journalist. He dug a deeper hole for himself and should have said nothing and consulted Sullivan or Brady there and then.

Mind you we shouldn't ignore the possibility that he's a shit Chief Scout they wanted shot of anyway...

Bloody stupid thing for him to say but would it have been racist if he had said "No more moody players like Sakho" or "We now are only signing English players" or "We are concentrating signing British players rather than foreign players"?

Not 100% sure but I think when talking about Masuaku's spitting offence David Moyes said something about the fact that spitting is not acceptable in "our" culture. Does that then get twisted around to mean that all foreign players believe that spitting is acceptable and thus the comment is then deemed racist?

As I say a really naïve and stupid thing to say but the line in the sand between stupidity and racism seems to have disappeared.

If Henry had any sense he should have recorded conversations with Dildo One and Tits McGee over the years. It's obvious he's become the board's fall guy. Let's hope he dishes the dirt on these two cunts as he's unlikely to get another top football job if the FA get their way.

Yet another example of the press & an agent blowing up a story out of all proportion, to suit their own purpose. Of course Henry was somewhat naive to say this in an email, but it was hardly the crime of the century ffs! To then wish for it to rumble on, as one poster has suggested on here, is crazy. This could harm the club in many ways, so why would we want that? Also, none of us know if Sullivan, Gold or anyone else is involved, so why jump on them, without any proof? Some of you lot on a jury would be a nightmare, “he’s guilty, now I suppose we have to hear some evidence to make it look good”!

What he said was not racist. Africans aren't a race any more than Europeans are. If he'd said we're not taking any black players then clearly that would be; but he didn't.

This ridiculous witch hunt has been successful because those in positions of power and influence don't have the balls to stand up to the hysterical finger pointing and name calling that passes for justice these days. Shame on you Sullivan.

If he'd said we're not taking any more French players no one would have batted an eyelid.